96 The Environmental Debate
of plenty. When the buffalo roamed the plains
in multitudes he slaughtered only what he could
eat and these he used to the hair and bones.
Early one spring the Lakotas were camped on
the Missouri river when the ice was beginning to
break up. One day a buffalo floated by and it was
hauled ashore. The animal proved to have been
freshly killed and in good condition, a welcome
occurrence at the time since the meat supply was
getting low. Soon another came floating down-
stream, and it was no more than ashore when
others came into view. Everybody was busy sav-
ing meat and hides, but in a short while the buf-
falo were so thick on the water that they were
allowed to float away. Just why so many buffalo
had been drowned was never known, but I relate
the instance as a boyhood memory.
I know of no species of plant, bird, or animal
that were exterminated until the coming of the
white man. For some years after the buffalo dis-
appeared there still remained huge herds of ante-
lope, but the hunter’s work was no sooner done
in the destruction of the buffalo than his atten-
tion was attracted toward the deer. They are plen-
tiful now only where protected. The white man
considered natural animal life just as he did the
natural man life upon this continent, as “pests.”
Plants which the Indian found beneficial were also
“pests.” There is no word in the Lakota vocabu-
lary with the English meaning of this word.
There was a great difference in the attitude
taken by the Indian and the Caucasian toward
nature, and this difference made of one a conser-
vationist and of the other a non-conservationist
of life. The Indian, as well as all other creatures
that were given birth and grew, were sustained
by the common mother—earth. He was there-
fore kin to all living things and he gave to all
creatures equal rights with himself. Everything
of earth was loved and reverenced.
* * *
From Wakan Tanka there came a great
unifying life force that flowed in and through
all things—the flowers of the plains, blowing
winds, rocks, trees, birds, animals—and was the
same force that had been breathed into the first
man. Thus all things were kindred and brought
together by the same Great Mystery.
Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky,
and water was a real and active principle. For the
animal and bird world there existed a brother
feeling that kept the Lakota safe among them.
And so close did some of the Lakotas come to
their feathered and furred friends that in true
brotherhood they spoke a common tongue.
The animal had rights—the right of man’s
protection, the right to live, the right to multi-
ply, the right to freedom, and the right to man’s
indebtedness—and in recognition of these rights
the Lakota never enslaved the animal, and spared
all life that was not needed for food and clothing.Source: Luther Standing Bear, Land of the Spotted Eagle
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1933), pp. 165-66, 193.Document 81: Arthur Tansley on the Concept of the Ecosystem (1935)
Arthur Tansley, a plant ecologist and one of the founders of the British Ecological Society (established in 1913),
introduced the concept of the natural world as a set of complex, interacting communities. This selection from
an article by Tansley appeared in the journal of the Ecological Society of America, which begun publication in
1920, five years after the organization of the society.[T]he more fundamental conception [than
the plant biologist Frederic Clements’ applica-
tion of the term biome to “the whole complex
of organisms inhabiting a given region”] is, as
it seems to me, the whole system (in the sense
of physics), including not only the organism-
complex, but also the whole complex of physical
factors forming what we call the environment